Abstract
The analysis offered in this book throws a number of critical and suggestive conclusions about the reality of the Colombian sociopolitical scenario, all this from the specific study of a very interesting regional context: The Colombian Pacific. However, although the crux of this book has pointed to an analysis whose spatial delimitation is expressed, there is no doubt that its results are a point of reference to extend the analysis to other regions in order to understand the regional geopolitics in Colombia and its institutional equilibriums. In this regard, the book Analytical Narrative on Democracies in Colombia. Clientelism, government and public policy in the Pacific region, suggests, through different methodological exercises, that any approach to the study of the Colombian political and social context inevitably places us in a scenario plagued by multiple and varied contradictions. Although it is true that one of the most outstanding characteristics of the Colombian historical evolution has been the structural presence of intense dynamics and circles of violence, the coexistence of this nefarious scenario with one of the democratic traditions, at least formally, is especially suggestive and (unifying and non-conflicting) representative of the whole of Latin America. There is no doubt that the analytical intention of the team of researchers has been the construction of a theoretical sustenance that is consistent with the narrative and the empirical evidence. The conceptual management that accompanies the argumentative strategy serves as the basis for the development of a coherent work. Unquestionably, this is an initial/a primary contribution of scientific-interdisciplinary order to the study of the structural causes of the degradation of the state model in the Pacific and, of course, in a general way in Colombia. It only remains to continue advancing in the next installment of the investigative process in which, very pertinently, an excellent and recognized group of academics has embarked.
The analysis offered in this book throws a number of critical and suggestive conclusions about the reality of the Colombian sociopolitical scenario, all this from the specific study of a very interesting regional context: The Colombian Pacific. However, although the crux of this book has pointed to an analysis whose spatial delimitation is expressed, there is no doubt that its results are a point of reference to extend the analysis to other regions in order to understand the regional geopolitics in Colombia and its institutional equilibriums.
In this regard, the book Analytical Narrative on Democracies in Colombia. Clientelism, government and public policy in the Pacific region, suggests, through different methodological exercises, that any approach to the study of the Colombian political and social context inevitably places us in a scenario plagued by multiple and varied contradictions. Although it is true that one of the most outstanding characteristics of the Colombian historical evolution has been the structural presence of intense dynamics and circles of violence, the coexistence of this nefarious scenario with one of the democratic traditions, at least formally, is especially suggestive and (unifying and non-conflicting) representative of the whole of Latin America.
In this way, this evident contradiction tells us that it is in the manner of construction and by whom the construction of this democratic model has been advanced, that we are certainly able to identify many of the causes, direct and indirect, that have driven the development of that complicated and brutal context of confrontation and institutional, social, and human deterioration that, after so long, continues to plague all the structures of the Colombian reality.
A political and social tradition governed by exclusion has made Colombia, a country with hardly any tension of ethnic, racial, nationalist, or religious order, a fertile ground such that the supplanting or the challenge to the legitimacy of the State would end up becoming a constant historical. In as much, phenomena between which the armed conflict stands out and the appropriation of the illegality like form of vindication of the power in all its dimensions are the direct result of the disenchantment with a system that, under the deceptive mantle of a solid democracy, has acquired the ability to be as rigid or elastic as the traditionally dominant groups have required.
On the other hand, a historical review of Colombian conflictivity shows us how throughout its evolution, its articulating axes have not remained unchanged, which, in turn, has had a direct impact on the way it is perceived by both Colombians and the rest of the world. The visceral partisan clashes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based on the disputes over the distribution of political power and the irreconcilable positions that the different power groups had regarding the role that the Catholic Church should have in the model of social construction, they determined that the situation of conflict was assumed during this time as a matter of eminently internal connotations. However, with the emergence in the 1960s of the Marxist guerrillas around the claims against the possession of land and the use of natural resources, the conflict was raised for the first time to a matter of international implications, in this case from the outline offered by the Cold War.
Since then, the metamorphosis experienced by the cycle of violence and deinstitutionalization in Colombia, as well as its new stimuli and undesirable consequences, have not been disconnected even for a moment from the priorities that the international community has been establishing in terms of security, as well as from the way in which the internal, national, and regional elites have adapted their interests to these realities.
In general terms, this book has sought to visualize an interesting hypothesis that for several years has been making career among the most authoritative academic literature in the study of the origins of contemporary forms of violent confrontation at international level: The most anomic forms of violence inevitably originate in contexts of strong deinstitutionalization of the nation-state. That is to say, state fragility and the loss of the monopoly of legitimate force determine the stage in which the so-called new wars unfold, as the well-known British political scientist Mary Kaldor calls them throughout her work.
In this way, it is possible to affirm that the privatization of violence reverses the evolutionary logic of the modern state, where until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the war necessarily involved the construction of solid political, social, economic, and military structures that would allow it to better deal with the conflicts it assumed internationally. In contrast, now the new internal conflicts have their peak in states characterized by the rise of crime and corruption in public spheres, economic crises, and, therefore, the generalized deterioration of the concept of legitimacy, affirmation that, without a doubt, Émile Durkheim would defend forcefully.
Thus, regardless of whether the scenario is the Pacific region, the whole of Colombia or any latitude of the international scenario, the responsibility for the emergence of contemporary armed conflicts is easily attributable to contexts of state weakening, either through the absolute absence of legitimate mechanisms of territorial control or the systematic erosion of these.
Then, the destructuring of the legitimacy of the state apparatus, as it is well concluded in this book, constitutes the most evident root of the acceleration in the appearance of criminal manifestations at all levels, dimensions, and spheres.
Therefore, it is possible to conclude that a decadent state scenario is the best breeding ground for the emergence of non-conventional claim models, which, due to the lack of suitable channels that allow their proper incorporation and management in a solid democratic process, can easily mutate into illegal, violent, and predatory expressions of political, economic, and social rearrangement. In general terms, and to conclude, it is important to underline again that this book proposes a deep, detailed, and courageous study of a specific and pertinent problematic from an interdisciplinary perspective, starting from the history, the story, the mathematical theory of games, and the instruments provided by micro-econometrics.
There is no doubt that the analytical intention of the team of researchers has been the construction of a theoretical sustenance that is consistent with the narrative and the empirical evidence. The conceptual management that accompanies the argumentative strategy serves as the basis for the development of a coherent work. Unquestionably, this is an initial/a primary contribution of scientific-interdisciplinary order to the study of the structural causes of the degradation of the state model in the Pacific and, of course, in a general way in Colombia. It only remains to continue advancing in the next installment of the investigative process in which, very pertinently, an excellent and recognized group of academics has embarked.
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Cendales, A., Guerrero, H., Wilches, J., Pinto, A. (2019). Conclusions. Deinstitutionalization of the State, Violence, and Social Anomie. In: Analytical Narrative on Subnational Democracies in Colombia . SpringerBriefs in Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13009-1_6
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